Anybody any info on what Super Cat has been doing for the last decade or more? does he still make music?I just read something that will be old news to most people, but was new to me. I read that Super Cat shot Nitty Gritty dead, in a shoot-out that also involved his brother Junior Demus and Sluggy Ranks. Apparently the shooting was over a financial dispute between Junior Cat and Sluggy Ranks. According to what i read, Super Cat was deemed innocent by trial, after it was alleged he was defending himself after Nitty Gritty pulled a gun first.i find this shocking and disturbing, Super Cat has long been a favourite of mine and its a shame that his badman lyrics seem to have been for real rather than pantomime-theatre. Anybody got any further info on this situation and on Super Cat's post-ninetees activities?I now hear an extra resonance to Tenor Saw's classic tune "Roll Call" ......"When the roll is called up yonder Tenor Saw and Nitty Gritty im sure will be there" and of course Nitty Gritty's own "He was a friend" too.

you think this **** is pantomime? really? it aint. these are bad people we are messing with here, you dont cross them or you find that out. "innocent" people in a half civilized society dont carry guns. regardless of who drew first, the dude had a loaded pistol in his pocket. and i bet his concealed weapons permit was out of date (thats sarcasm you know).

bottom line: these arent cuddly little meek people. they will kill your ass given half a reason. believe it star.

that's pretty much in line with most of the accounts i have read, although i don't remember the exact details that precipitated the incident - some say that there was also a girl in dispute that Junior Cat was involved with, as well as the issue of money that Nitty felt he was owed by Cat, or that someone owed to someone else. whatever was the cause of the beef, Nitty Gritty was after Junior Cat and accosted the two outside of Cat's Super Power record store in the Bronx. he pulled a gun on Super Cat and it failed to fire (dud round or pilot error?) - Cat probably pulled his pistol at about the same time and shot NItty. Cat got in a bit of hot water for having an unlicensed firearm but otherwise was cleared.

i wouldn't call that badmanism - i would say it's self preservation. NYC was a much wilder place back then, that was near the peak of the era of the JA drug gangs that dominated parts of the Bronx and other areas. as a well-known entertainer that did not hide his support for the PNP (after all, he rose to fame deejaying Skeng Don's StereoMars sound - you don't get to do that unless you're a solid PNP man), Super Cat would have been a bit thick to not carry some form of self defense. not to say that either of them were complete angels, and we will leave it at that.

i have heard the Sluggy Ranks angle. alternately it was Sluggy had some money dispute with Junior Cat over the "Draw Fi Mi Bible" record at about the same time. some versions of the story have Sluggy along with Nitty, Sluggy drawing a gun first but not firing and Nitty taking it to the next level and Sluggy just froze. Nitty and Cat had a history of dissing each other for some time before their confrontation; Nitty had a reputation for being quarrelsome and generally unpleasant at times, so there was really no love lost between them. either variation of the characters involved in the story is plausible.

there's an absolute truckload of foolishness all over the net with other theories, though. Super Cat still does shows and things, his road manager and longtime friend died a few years ago right about the time he put an album out.... think it was called "Reggaematic", and that's the last output i recall seeing from him

hey thanks for that blackbeltjonez, thats exactly the story i had heard over the years.

i hear you on the part about carrying a loaded piece around was probably very common...these days you get put away for it though and certainly in ja you gone to gun court often to never resurface.

but it reminds me of an alborosie song not too long ago where he was singing that the police in NYC are pressuring the locksman, and his words when he is walking down the street at night, being accosted by the police and asked to identify himself, are something like:

ID, passport and me gun suhno you dont need no ansah

like yeah right youre a visitor to this country and youre gonna hand over your gun to a cop on the street of NYC and expect him to not get upset AND then you arent going to answer questions. somehow i dont think it works like that, at least not in my experience. over here there would be 20 squad cars and you would be eating dirt on the street with 50 guns pointed at you.

its a good song though so maybe that makes up for its absurdity a bit.

it was different in the 80s i guess, and certainly from a personal perspective it might be necessary to walk around heavy but if the cops check you out you are going to doin some splainin...

jb welda wrote:you think this **** is pantomime? really? it aint. these are bad people we are messing with here, you dont cross them or you find that out. "innocent" people in a half civilized society dont carry guns. regardless of who drew first, the dude had a loaded pistol in his pocket. and i bet his concealed weapons permit was out of date (thats sarcasm you know).

bottom line: these arent cuddly little meek people. they will kill your ass given half a reason. believe it star.

one lovejb

we are talking about entertainers from Jamaica here - many carry guns out of self-preservation because that is their reality. but many Jamaicans, especially males, have an unfortunate talent for escalating arguments into fights or worse, they are generally easily insulted and quick to anger. so, Jamaicans get that kind of reputation for bad behavior... but still, they are not all bloodthirsty killers (OK, except for a few..)

so on the badman scale i really don't think the Cat is going to rank high, all his yush talk aside. he killed a man because he found himself in a situation where he felt he had to, and i feel like i would have done the same thing in his situation. i mean, honestly, what would you expect him to do? wait for Nitty to sort out his gun and give him a do-over? the state DA felt the same way and that was the end of that.

innocent people in so-called civilized societies DO carry guns - to protect themselves from the uncivilized. better to have and not need than need and not have. but those people that do carry have to know the CWP laws and restrictions and abide by them.

jb welda wrote:hey thanks for that blackbeltjonez, thats exactly the story i had heard over the years.

i hear you on the part about carrying a loaded piece around was probably very common...these days you get put away for it though and certainly in ja you gone to gun court often to never resurface.

but it reminds me of an alborosie song not too long ago where he was singing that the police in NYC are pressuring the locksman, and his words when he is walking down the street at night, being accosted by the police and asked to identify himself, are something like:

ID, passport and me gun suhno you dont need no ansah

like yeah right youre a visitor to this country and youre gonna hand over your gun to a cop on the street of NYC and expect him to not get upset AND then you arent going to answer questions. somehow i dont think it works like that, at least not in my experience. over here there would be 20 squad cars and you would be eating dirt on the street with 50 guns pointed at you.

its a good song though so maybe that makes up for its absurdity a bit.

it was different in the 80s i guess, and certainly from a personal perspective it might be necessary to walk around heavy but if the cops check you out you are going to doin some splainin...

one lovejb

well it's one thing to have a gun, and quite another to have it legally esp. in NY

NYC is a very tough place to get a CWP..... it's probably easier in JA now, the Gun Court laws are not as harsh as they once were back in the 70s and early 80s because they simply didn't work and it didn't matter anyway because at the height of all the Gun Court mania if you were a ranking and your services were needed by The Powers That Be for an election or whatever, someone would "fix" things for you and you were out-a-road again.... just the most laughable corruption...so much for the toughest gun laws ever.

jb welda wrote:but it reminds me of an alborosie song not too long ago where he was singing that the police in NYC are pressuring the locksman, and his words when he is walking down the street at night, being accosted by the police and asked to identify himself, are something like:

hmm never did think the "ganja" part there but why would he be handing over his ganga either? anyway albo is known for some pretty strange lyrics like in that other herbalist tune where he says to wash your ill gotten gains by buying an escalade (big cadillac SUV) and, i forget how he put it, but basically prostitutes.

still not sure about the gun vs ganga part but the ganga part certainly does fit the stereotype of a rasta better.

the excess amount of bullsh*t "facts" i'm seeing thrown around here suggests to me that nobody here relaying anything about that day has any clue what went down. Therefore, they should probably not speak about it on a public forum that everybody and their mom can read.

Cat's store in the Bronx, super power? you guys clearly don't know basic basic ny reggae facts, so i won't even try to enlighten you as there's about 50+ bullsh*t statements above.

listen who bus the biggest gun? selassie i - go look at the pictures. so many guns behind the scenes even among what we consider "conscious" artists so i don't think any of us should go judging anyone too quickly. i don't condone guns, but they're all over the place and it's a reality even among "roots" singers.

probably best to just not talk about what you don't know. unless you were there or have direct knowledge, i'd just say hush yourselves.

doh... that's all my fault, i posted quickly off the top of my head from obviously faulty memory without bothering to check anything. and the Super Power blunder i don't know what i was thinking, i know the store must have a connection to Jammy (and i have some Super Power 12"s, you would think that would have set off an alarm bell). i couldn't even get the borough right...

moral of the story: don't be like me and post carelessly when tired and having a couple few drinks.